It's a cash drop. They likely enter the amount of cash they are entering, drop it into the chute, and then it drops into a safe that only certain people have. It's so that managers don't need to be around to the end of the shift and the money is secure.

The cable that goes from the motherboard to the front panel is generally fairly poorly shielded so you get a lot of noise from the power cables around inside the case. As others have said, get an extension and plug into the back of your computer.

I'm not saying that they cheated somehow using a VPN. I'm saying that the wording makes it sound like the ban is for multiple things and they're focusing on the VPN part. However if you're running a VPN to one of your own devices, you could use it for some kind of traffic manipulation. I'm not sure how Fortnite does their aiming and everything but you could have a trigger that causes moments of intentional packet loss or delay so that you can aim for a headshot as the game waits for packets.

Have you got him to send a screenshot or something for the exact wording of the ban reason? Trust but verify. At this point since he appears to have done some significant steps to keep playing, he might have also been banned for trying to circumvent the ban which will be far harder to get repealed if the original ban was just for a VPN.

I mean if you're running stock speeds, probably. If you're planning to overclock then it should be a good option. Either way, if you can afford it in your build it does mean that you'll have decent cooling.